Glorious Days at the NMA

Andrew Sayers is thinking about the year 1913 as he looks out over Canberra's Lake Burley Griffin. Like the city itself, the lake was still just a dream 100 years ago.

The Director of the National Museum has been pondering 1913 for some time. At a roundtable in 2011 the Museum brought together academics and historians to discuss an appropriate exhibition for Canberra's centenary year.

Instead of focusing on Canberra itself, they decided that the year the new national capital was declared - 1913 - should be shown in a broader context.

"We have tended to think of Gallipoli as the being defining moment," he muses. "And one of the clichés I think that's often repeated in Australia is [that] Australia really only found its feet on the 25th of April 1915. But I think that would have been a real surprise to people in 1913 who had a real sense of what it was to be Australian".

Optimism

Glorious Days: Australia 1913 explores what life was like in Australia 12 years after Federation and before the world was shattered by the Great War of 1914-1918.

"It was a very interesting year right across the world, actually, in terms of art, politics and so on," says Sayers. "But then, when we started to look at what was happening in that year in Australia, it turned out to be absolutely fascinating...characterised by optimism about Australia [and] its future.

Once you start to look at that year, you realise how many of the themes in 1913 were themes that are still very strong in our sense of Australia."

The exhibition draws on the Museum's own collection and items borrowed from private lenders and other cultural institutions, including the National Film and Sound Archive, to show the vibrancy and modernity of a time when Australians were enjoying extra leisure time and new technologies.

Museum visitors are welcomed through a grand archway festooned with bunting and flags capturing the colour missing from the black and white images of the day.

There's a busy 'roadway' demonstrating the transition from horse-drawn buggy to modern automobile, art and craft with Australian themes, tributes to the great sports people feted that year, costumes, toys and the first stamps and bank notes produced by the young Commonwealth.

The exhibition also touches on the fear created by our vast unprotected borders and the pessimism that existed back then about the future of indigenous Australians.

Changing roles

Senior curator Michelle Hetherington says 1913 can be described as a 'hinge-year' - a year in which people embraced the modern world of aeroplanes and cinema even as attitudes and prejudices persisted from the past. Though Australians were proud of the Federation and the progressive policies of the day, most still saw themselves very much a part of the British Empire.

Hetherington says Australia was leading the way in some aspects of education, human rights and social responsibility. As she researched 1913, she was particularly struck by the changing role of women.

"To realise the rather entrenched rather negative ideas about the capacity of women that existed at that time in the world is always a shock. Australia was doing something about it," she says.

1913 was a big year for dancing - the tango arrived from Argentina via Europe - and roller-skating was all the rage. Melba was celebrating 25 years on the stage at Covent Garden and whistling was popular - the New Zealand born 'siffleur' Borneo Gardiner became a recording star.

Australians were not to know the extent of the tragedies to come but in a gentle acknowledgement of the future, the exhibition becomes more sombre as visitors near the end.

Modernity

Andrew Sayers hopes Glorious Days will give a sense of just how rich and interesting Australian history is.

"We tend to look at the Edwardian period through these kind of rather rose-coloured spectacles of nostalgia," he says. "But for people living at the time it was actually a period of great modernity. So some of the bright colour hopefully will come through."

He says that Australia was a complicated place with lots of interesting challenges at the time and believes the exhibition will be a success if it encourages visitors to reflect on where we've come from, what are we still grappling with, and what's changed and what hasn't in the past 100 years.